


When It's Time

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Chess Metaphors, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Post-X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019), coming home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24395656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: This is the story of how the magician-king of Genosha remembered how to smile. It is also the story of his magician-consort, and a story about love, and loss, and a heartfelt offer, and a chess piece or two.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	When It's Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fic I wrote for Bookends, the Cherik zine! I wasn't sure at first if we needed to keep things exclusive to that, but other people've posted their contributions, so I figured, it's been a while, might as well! 
> 
> The title, this time, comes from the Green Day song of that name. It’s about love, and unlocking what’s been locked, and taking someone’s hand at the right time. It seemed just right. :-)

This is the story of how the magician-king of Genosha remembered how to smile. It is also the story of his magician-consort, and a story about love, and loss, and a heartfelt offer, and a chess piece or two.

It is not the story of the storm-tossed ocean in which the king, whose name is Erik, first met his consort. And it is not the wonderful and terrible story of the future-past timespell, nor the magicians' war against the Apocalypse Cult. Those are other stories, for another time, though they are also worth telling.

This story, however, is about an ending, or a beginning, and a smile that changes the world. Like magic, perhaps, though Erik and Charles, being magicians, might disagree with that comparison. Or perhaps they wouldn't, in the end.

It begins in the aftermath, like this:

Erik, the magician-king of the Free Mages' Kingdom of Genosha, hurt too deeply to smile again. He had lost so much in this last battle, after all.

They all had. So much loss.

He touched the chess piece, gently; he set it down, and stepped out onto cool grey stone under creamy rose-and-violet oncoming evening. The rough-hewn balcony of his home held him up; it thrummed with sympathy and with veins of iron ore. The soul of the earth, here under his feet. His land.

His soul had not yet healed. He’d begun to think it never would.

His people were healing too, in the aftermath of the fight with the Phoenix magic and the strangers with their uncanny sorcery. A few of them were out and about, speaking to each other, carrying baskets of bread and vegetables, helping repair a fence-post as twilight sidled in. They had been shaken; they still believed in refuge. In this kingdom they’d crafted: a place of their own, away from the march of human un-gifted time and fear and suspicion.

This kingdom had not saved the Lady Raven. Erik had loved her like a sister—like the sister she would have been, if he and Charles—

Charles. He wished he’d not set down the chess piece. His fingers remembered the shape of the knight. His fingers remembered too many things.

He loved Charles. He knew that with bittersweet heartbreaking clarity. He had loved Charles when those witch-blue eyes had plunged into an ocean to find him, when Charles had spun invisible webs of magic into Erik’s mind and Erik’s heart, when Charles had fought the wicked mage Sebastian at his side, when Erik had lost control in a moment of blinding pain and caused pain _to_ Charles—

They had fought. They often did. They had left each other; they did that too. They each burned and crackled with power and stubbornness and certainty. They had never ceased being in love.

Charles, in his own kingdom—the historic jewel of Westchester, folded into sprawling gardens and antique wealth, inherited and not hard-won, not like the kingdom Erik’d carved out of an island and his scorching need and his affinity for rich metals and the purring core of the earth—had built a school for magicians, a dream that’d taken shape, a hope given substance. Erik had believed in that dream once. And then he hadn’t.

Now, he thought—with some irony—he did. Again. Belatedly. Because what had he built if not a home? A refuge? Even, on occasion, a school, or at least a training-ground?

The world had changed. Magic danced side by side with helicopters and politics and engineering marvels. Kingdoms had negotiated the acceptance of the gifted, or not negotiated any acceptance, or thrown them into prisons. And Erik had been so angry, so furious at the idiocy, so full of simmering vengeful need, for so long—

Charles Xavier, in Westchester’s spires and libraries and a plush-blanketed bedroom, had reminded him how to want. How to want to belong. How to see a community and a kingdom as not a trap nor a weakness but a place to laugh, to make discoveries, to reach out a hand and say _you’re not alone_.

As a king, as a magician, Erik had admired Charles and found in those blue eyes an equal, a surprise, a match. As a man—

He gazed across his kingdom without seeing it properly. They’d done some rebuilding, after the Anti-Magic Brigade had come violently seeking the Phoenix. They’d need to do more; the work was not yet complete.

Erik had offered the Phoenix a refuge, for a moment. A span of heartbeats.

He’d known her—impossible not to know one of the most promising young apprentices of the age, but also he’d met her in person, in the Apocalypse Cult war. He’d been impressed, then.

She’d been more powerful than any of them knew. And her fiery loss was not Charles’ fault, not precisely; but he had been involved, he had had the training of her, and he had not been able—with all his power and his political maneuvering and his kingdom’s wealth—to prevent the tragedy.

Erik gazed at the soft blue of night as it prowled over Genoshan skies. Charles’ eyes had always been so very blue.

Erik himself had come home, after. He’d wanted to be here. A place he’d built. His people.

Not alone, he thought. Hope. Given substance.

He understood, now. Maybe more than he ever had.

He knew Charles had abdicated. Left Westchester. Gone elsewhere.

A political decision, to be sure—quite a few people blamed their king, their supposed genius magician leader, for the grief and loss and anguish that hung over everyone like a shroud. But also Erik suspected Charles had wanted to leave. To find someplace away from memories and guilt that seared into his heart at every turn.

Erik knew about grief and guilt and rage. They’d been his sole companions for years. Until Charles, with that calm tea-scented expensively-suited voiceless murmur, had sent a drift of mental magic curling into Erik’s mind and shown him other companions. Generosity. Optimism. Passion.

Love.

In the present he’d been standing on his balcony for quite some time. One or two apprentices—the magic-gifted, to a greater or lesser degree, finding their own homes here away from the un-gifted who’d fear or seek to use them—glanced up. A flutter of flame-spell quirked up from someone’s hand; Erik shook his head before she could send a fire-sprite up to check on her king, and offered a small gesture. Appreciation. A benediction. An acknowledgement.

He had not, at times, been a good king. He could be irritable. He could lose control. He did not trust easily.

At times he had been a good king. He’d fight to protect his people with every drop of power, blood, love. They knew it, and he knew it. He lived and worked alongside them. And when he caught himself using his battle-honed magic to think strategically about the richest earth for planting, or the uses for that ore in those rolling hills, he thought that perhaps Charles would be proud.

He did not want Charles to be alone.

Somewhere in that thought lay a decision.

Erik, magician-king of Genosha, sighed and said to the stars and the sky, “He’ll likely say no, in any case,” and crossed both arms. The stars and sky did not reply, pointedly so.

“In that case,” Erik said, “I might as well try. If you’re going to look at me like that. He likely will say no and this is a reckless and terrible decision.”

But, suggested the night, you’ve made quite a few reckless and terrible decisions. And you’re still here.

“…here,” Erik said, and sighed again. “I’ll go.”

Being a king and the _other_ most powerful magician alive had some usefulness; he found Charles in Paris, sitting at a café, pretending to enjoy a cup of coffee. The current queen of the kingdom of France had a few drops of sorcerer’s blood in her veins, nothing enough to do much with, but she tended to have a laid-back attitude toward magic-wielders, and most of the French citizenry appreciated the magicians who’d shown up and saved the beautiful Notre Dame cathedral from fire. Erik had a few friends and a few connections, and Charles wasn’t precisely hiding, though he did have a quiet _I’m not terribly recognizable, no you’ve not seen me on the television, nothing to care about here_ spell flickering around the edges of perception.

Erik wouldn’t’ve seen him either, except that he’d been reliably informed that Charles Xavier, former ruler of Westchester, enjoyed this café. And he knew Charles’ magic. He knew the taste, the feel, the intimate caress of it. He knew which spell that was.

He came up and sat down. Charles looked up, surprised and unsurprised at once, as if this had been inevitable. “Erik.”

“Charles. Enjoying your coffee?” A car, two cars, passed by in the distance; a young man on a bicycle pedaled past. Life, side by side with magic on the sidewalk.

“It’s hardly Earl Grey,” Charles observed, “but then again I’ve been attempting to leave the past behind. To start over. Something new.”

“That’s no reason to deny yourself. I know you and your preferences.” He eyed the innocently steaming cup. “Which that isn’t.”

“What do you want, Erik?” Charles sounded tired. Fraying. Not angry, but worn: a wounded ruler in a gleaming clockwork chair in incongruous Paris sunshine. No shimmering sorcerer’s robes or eloquent teacher’s presence, only a neat and no doubt expensive modern-day suit, and unmoving hands. He might’ve been as human as the next man on the street, if that man were wealthy and weary. He was nevertheless no less a magician, and a leader, and beautiful.

Erik loved him. Suddenly, astonishingly, perhaps more than ever: the sheer familiarity of Charles’ exasperation with him lifted weight from his heart.

He wanted Charles to be exasperated with him, at his side, not leaving him, forever.

He hoisted up the gift he’d brought. “I thought perhaps you’d like a game.” Enchanted chess pieces, awakened by a touch, shuffled into position: forming ready-and-waiting lines. A knight’s armor clinked; a bishop’s robes rustled.

“A game,” Charles said. The recognizable stream of his own magic eddied and rose and swirled, brushing Erik’s thoughts like a kiss, but did not plunge in. Charles, Erik thought, had learned better control.

Or else was afraid. Hurting, and wary, and unwilling to cause further harm.

Charles said, “You came without it. The—” and gestured: meaning the ensorcelled helm that’d been designed precisely to counter Charles’ gifts. Erik had used it before.

He did not have it now.

He said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

And that was Charles as well: that was them. They’d trusted each other, once. In a way they still did. He knew Charles; Charles knew him.

Erik caught himself wanting to smile. He didn’t. But nearly.

He answered, “You know why.”

“Do I?”

Not easy; nothing was, with Charles. But nothing had ever been as bright. As glorious. As warm.

As real.

“You can find out,” Erik said this time. “You’re welcome to.”

“Am I,” Charles said. His power stirred, pulsed, wove its way across Erik’s thoughts: not pushing, not pressuring, but exploring. Charles’ magic had always felt to Erik like heat, like fingertips trailing over bared skin, like fine suit-fabric slowly peeled down a layer at a time, like the taste of bergamot and citrus and sensuality, chess-matches and words that met in fencing-bouts and clothing strewn on someone’s floor.

That floor meant a bedroom. A _shared_ room. Erik thought it very clearly, and under that he also thought or rather felt or permitted the more bashful emotion to lie bare and revealed: Charles, for all the passion and provocation and heated intent, had also given him a meaning for the calmer kinder gentler word. Shared, that home. Together.

That’d meant something. That had, back then, begun to mend cracks that Erik had not thought could be drawn together. Edges had found ways to fit. Not never-broken, but repaired.

“Erik,” Charles said, soft. “A game, you said.”

“Not one game.” He gazed at Charles, under sunlight. He took Charles’ coffee and stole a sip. “It isn’t bad. Though you’ve let it grow cold. More than one game. A rematch. The first of many.”

“Taking what you want,” Charles said. “As you do. Would we play it out here in Paris? Was that your plan?”

“I’m not,” Erik began, and stopped as his heart ached, and then picked up that heart and held it out to Charles anyway. “I’ll take away what you _don’t_ want. I’ll buy the world’s supply of Earl Grey if you’d like. We have some lucrative exports from the mines these days. I came here as myself. Not the king of Genosha, not the helmet-wearing evil sorcerer from that dreadfully over-acted film version of us. I came here to ask you a question.”

“A question?”

“An offer.” He put out a hand; Charles did not move his own away. Their fingers brushed; emboldened, Erik rested his on top. Charles’ hand, in his. Old and new again. Amazing. Astounding. Just right, the way they fit. “You gave me a home, once.”

Charles started to speak, and stopped. But he must have heard Erik’s thoughts; his magic still hovered and coiled around them, and Erik’s mind was broadcasting it all in any case, shouting _yes yes yes say yes please I love you please…_

He said aloud, “Let me do the same. For you.”

“With you,” Charles said: a king who’d held and lost a kingdom, a man who’d once been arrogant and no longer was, who looked squarely into Erik’s eyes and began, just a bit, to smile. “At your side. Among your people.”

“Our people,” Erik corrected. “They know how I feel about you. I’ve always told them. Every word, every speech, every time I spoke about you. Genosha might be my kingdom. But it’s mine because you had a dream, once, and you shared it with me. They know. I know.”

“Chess matches,” Charles said. “And rematches.”

“As many,” Erik said, “as we can play, in a lifetime.”

“It won’t be simple.”

“Winning against you never is.” He knew, and Charles knew, all the unspoken layers. Finding a place, beginning again, believing again.

But they’d win. Because he was Erik Lehnsherr, and he’d have Charles Xavier at his side. They could accomplish anything, together. Because they wouldn’t be alone.

Charles turned the hand, under his. Laced fingers through Erik’s. “You’ve made an impressive first move.”

“No,” Erik said. “You did. Years ago. I’m asking you, Charles. I’m _asking_. It’s the only strategy I have left to try.”

“I think,” Charles said, “you’re doing quite well. Home, you said. With you.”

“We could sit here in the sun and play this game out first. Whatever you’d like.” A charmed knight’s horse stomped a hoof encouragingly.

“Perhaps,” Charles said. “One game, here…to see how it goes…but no matter who wins, we’ll need a second game.”

“Of course.”

“On your jet. Or however you got here.”

“Yes,” Erik said, somewhat nonsensically, lightheaded with joy. “Yes.”

“I think I might like to find out,” Charles decided, “what home might be like with you.”

And Erik felt the emotion, then; felt it tugging at lips and heart-strings like the pull of a kite, like a promise, like a future. His mouth moved; he knew, or remembered at last, what a smile could be.

Charles was smiling too. They sat in calm café sun smiling at each other. The chessboard sparkled in silver and pearl: two hues, but intermingled, joined in play.

“Yes,” Charles said, an echo of Erik’s words and both their thundering thoughts. “That.”

“You’ll love Genosha,” Erik vowed, holding his beloved’s hand, “you’ll love it all, Charles, I promise you. We’ll be happy.”

“I know we will,” Charles answered, the words mirrored in magical projection, crystal-clear: _I know. I love you, Erik Lehnsherr. Where you are has always felt like home._

And in that moment, on that day, Erik Lehnsherr—magician-king of the kingdom of Genosha—recalled entirely and wholly how to smile, even after hurt.

And he remembered again, over and over, every day, from then on.

As did his beloved. Who very shortly officially became Royal Magician-Consort of Genosha, in a ceremony witnessed by cheering citizens and magical apprentices with mouths full of chess-patterned delicious cake. The best love stories, after all, often feel like a smile. And Erik and Charles—and consequently the history of Genosha—are a love story, and a story about finding home.

Home comes with quite a lot of Earl Grey tea. Erik keeps his promises. That always makes Charles smile, too.


End file.
